June 2, 2009

Michelle Detorie lives in Goleta, CA where she edits Hex Presse and Womb. Her pamphlet about humans and animals and seabird rescue, How Hate Got Hand, was recently published by eohippus labs. She is currently working on a series of synesthetically coded visual poems that investigate the question of women and animals and whether or not they are real. She blogs at ovariessequins.blogspot.com.

When I first read this book, I felt it confirmed things I suspected but had not allowed myself to believe.

When I finished this book, I thought about the work I wanted to do and wondered at the possibilities made real through the fantasy, the transformations, the acts of radical imagination, the solidarity among creatures.

This book will change the ways you look at animals and women and men and babies and science and institutions.

This book slips.

This book is a fierce puppy.

A favorite quote from book:

On the ground floor of the motherhood building there is a shop with updated motherhood items. In one section: straps, harnesses, leashes, pens, gates for doorways, tranquilizers, etc. In another: flow charts, comparison charts of how other children do at equivalent ages, record-keeping books…all the software of motherhood.

It is a fantastic and funny story of women who become animals and animals who become women. It is not fantasy in the wished-for sense, but fantasy in a way to say it sense. This story of women and animals isn’t real, but it is true. The fantasy in the wished-for sense is the way the creatures’ transformations becomes a protest. A transformation that resists invisibility but also uses invisibility to achieve its goals. The women and animals easily camouflage themselves so that they may gather and organize. Suddenly the master-men, doctor-men, and priest-men must concern themselves with the world of animals and women, and they wish to locate the creatures who they have often overlooked: the furry, the matronly, the disheveled. When they do see Pooch, the main character who is somewhere between setter and human, it is because they wish to sleep with her. The question of the offspring these hum/animal females will produce -- will it be human or beast? -- runs parallel to Pooch’s quest to express herself through song. It is a profound romp with an ending that will surprise you. Highly recommended for lovers of operas, beasts, and optimism.

promissory

Welcome to Delirious Hem

ORIGIN STORY: It was 2006. Some of us wished the women poets we admired would write more about poetry and poetics, experimental, post-avant. Some of them weren’t writing about these things at all. Why not? They’re busy, some of us surmised. Some of them were writing about these things, but some of us were greedy, and wanted them to write more. Some of them were men, and some of us wanted some of them to write about experimental women poets, gender performativity on the page, masculinity via grotesque, etc. Wanted some of them to write about some of these things more/at all.

What if some of us built a platform? What if the parameters were informal, relatively boundless? What if the form invited conversation and huzzah?

But some of us are busy, too. Some of us can’t possibly fit one more dish on our plates, and some of us can’t possibly spin one more plate in the air, and some of us can’t possibly...

Well, here’s what some of us offer all of us: It’s a blog, it’s a poetics journal, it’s a platform. From time to time, a post will appear. It will be exciting, provocative, fresh, or bombastic. It will go with your eyes. It will never stop stop making sense, it will always love you, it will probably work.

Discussion in the comment boxes below is ecstatically encouraged, with the understanding not all members of Pussipo are likely to agree on any given topic (oh how rare, but how delicious the disagreements too), not all contributors herein are members of Pussipo, each contributor is the rightful possessor of her or his own opinion, and some contributors may be more inclined to respond to comments directed their way than others. Which is just to say what should be obvious: We are various. We aim to mix it up.